The road to Belladrum

This is not a review. It’s more an explanation of why roadtrips and general madness are such a good idea. Don’t expect objectivity, or comments on sound quality and what guitar Larry used for which song. This is the road to Belladrum and beyond through the eyes of Goldmother.

A little over a year ago I didn’t do this kind of thing. There I was in my little suburban life growing my organic veg, taking the kids to school, being normal, doing normal things. That’s not a slight on growing your own veg, or taking the kids to school, but things had got a bit boring. And I’m not a boring kind of girl. Then in January I got an email. It was an email that changed my year entirely. I think you know what that email informed me of.

Since then, well, it’s all gone a bit mad. I started off with a ticket for the MEN gig in April. Through fate and madness I ended up getting to the first Hoxton gig in March. Armed with train fare, a hotel room booked and a couple of tickets, off I trotted to London. It became a defining feature of the year. Just the MEN gig wasn’t going to be enough, so tickets for Birmingham were quickly bought, the MEN gig turned into an entire weekend of James festivities. A couple of months later came another mad, last minute dash down to London for Hoxton 2. When the fellow Mums in my village started to question whether I was having some kind of mid life crisis, the only reply I could think of was that maybe I was, but at least I wasn’t on Prozac like them. I had James instead.

Then there was Glasgow. Three women, one car, and a mission to see James play 6 hours drive away. We made it, a great night ensued. Suddenly Scotland didn’t seem so far away. Hell, thought I, Inverness can’t be that much further than Glasgow, lets go to Belladrum. Stupidly, at this point my mind lost all reason, I began to imagine balmy evenings, the children playing in the setting sun….. Belladrum was a great idea… taking the kids to their first James gig was an even better idea. Tim thought it was, and who can argue with him?

Fast forward. Thursday 9^th August. I have dropped Mr G off at work, and now I’m heading northwards to the furthest reaches of this country. With two kids in the back of the car, and a journey ahead of me the satnav predicts to be 7hrs 44mins. The weather forecast is not brilliant. The car is packed with head to toe gore tex outfits and wellies. It was not what I had planned to be honest. However, the miles slip away in a pleasant haze of chocolate éclairs and plenty of singing along to James. My lovely daughter perfects her technique of screaming for no reason. Why are you screaming Amber? Because I like screaming. I can scream really loud! And yes indeed she can.

As the miles rack up I start to wonder how many people out there do this kind of thing. I begin to question my sanity. I start to feel sick from eating too many sweets. Then the motorway ends and with at least a couple of hours drive still ahead of me, it’s A roads all the way. The reality of just how far away Inverness is starts to hit me. The A9 north of Perth is the longest straightest, possibly dullest road I’ve ever driven on. Especially when you’re stuck behind a hay lorry. Going at 35 miles an hour. There’s not nearly enough dual carriageway on the A9. Nor enough snipers taking out lorries.

After getting lost in Beauly (the genius that is satnav doesn’t recognise the Belladrum postcode) we finally arrive at our destination. As I climb/ fall out the car I have a sensation akin to sea sickness. I have stopped moving at last. Now I just have a tent to put up, kids to feed, and a really long queue to get wristbands. At this point huge kudos goes out to Su and Zip, who helped me enormously, ferrying stuff from the car, helping get the tent up. A huge and much deserved thankyou.

Stuff happens inbetween Thursday night and James. My son decides he hates dark tents (so any bands playing in tents are out) and more disturbingly decides he doesn’t like loud music. My daughter decides she is unable to walk anywhere, and needs to be carried. I start to worry that by the time James get onstage I’ll just be a hunchbacked cripple. There is a bouncy castle though. I have driven 500 miles to take the kids on a bouncy castle. I question my sanity again. A drunken public schoolboy stops by our tent on the Friday night. A legend in his own imagination, he asks me which school I went too. Bless him, he was in a state of trauma because all he wanted to do was be a musician (man) but his parents wanted him to be a diplomat. They never offered that as a career option at my school strangely.

James.

The rain begins mid afternoon. Proper rain. Proper festival mud inducing rain. Armed with my wellies and lovely waterproofs I find Lisa and Mac. With outrageous luck (or alarming predictability) my husband and kids manage to find us outside the beer tent. As James – time approaches Me Lisa and Mac abandon Mr G and the kids to their wet and muddy fate. We bustle our way to the front, to claim our spot in front of Larry.

The comments started pretty soon, by fellow festival goers who as Mac so succinctly put it, blamed us personally for the death of William Wallace. I have been to many places in the world and been accused of many things because I was born in England but nowhere have I faced quite such bitter hatred. I didn’t care frankly, James were about to come on. But I could’ve done without it to be honest.

After so many gigs this year, I still haven’t lost the thrill of seeing the boys walk onstage. It still seems like a miracle, I want to pinch myself and ask if it could really be happening to me again. Larry’s intro to Born Of Frustration begins and the excitement sweeps me away, we’re all whooping away, dancing frenetically, oblivious to the rain. If it couldn’t get more frenetic, Tomorrow lifts me up beyond frenzy and Sit Down, which always seems such a cliché on paper just always hits the spot live. You can’t help but love it. The abuse starts to make a return during Chain Mail. I can’t help but REALLY dance to this song. It’s about dancing, loosing yourself, freeing yourself afterall. Some girl behind me takes exception to me having a small backpack (and I mean small) No I am not going to put it down in the mud so you can stamp on it. I may be English, but I didn’t leave my brain at the border. I carry on dancing and try to loose myself again.

Play Dead has sounded amazing this year. I’ve enjoyed it so much, as an album track I liked it, but it didn’t blow me away completely. I have revised that opinion since Hoxton 1, and it’s got better and better. Out To Get You is just always right. It makes all the grand gestures without ever becoming too cloying or sentimental. It has more perfection in one note than anything ever written by U2. And that is fact, it’s not up for discussion or debate. Unfortunately my enjoyment of it is darkened by a tap on my shoulder from annoying girl. As I haven’t let her stamp on my bag, she has unzipped it, emptied the contents out (new gore tex coat included) and trodden them into the mud. I miss a good deal of this magical song because I’m trying to retrieve my possessions out of the sodden ground. I am unimpressed to say the least. Bag safely dispatched to safer ground with Robin and Dave at the barrier, I get on with my gig.

Tim begins introducing Bubble with a dedication to Tony Wilson. While some make their appreciation known and applaud the memory of the legendary man, I can’t help but hear someone shouting ‘welcome to Scotland.’ It’s a shame, but probably to be expected from a festival crowd. Bubble and Upside are songs that get me very excited about the new album. They have everything that I want from James songs, and then more. While Bubble sounds raw and new and very unpolished as yet, it has that James quality that makes it an old friend on first airing. I was still singing ‘I’m Aliiiive’ the next morning. Upside truly does feel like an established James classic now. It’s yearning, it soars, it’s just beautiful. I lose the ability to speak with any clarity on this one, all I can say is that I’m with Jim, I love it.

Disappointingly, but perhaps sensibly, Tim looks out at the audience, sussing out his escape routes into the crowd but decides to stay on the stage for Say Something.

Next up is my song, Gold Mother. I can’t help but feel slightly proprietorial about this song. It is mine, and Larry knows it. He’s calling me up onto the stage for the customary fan dance off, Tim acknowledges this by giving me and Mac the nod. Reader, my heart is pounding. Mac is up and over the barrier. I am stuck. The barrier is very high, and as I scramble over it, pulled by security one way, my feet held onto by annoying girl, I’m starting to wonder what I did to her in a previous life. It’s not a pretty sight, I feel as inelegant as a beached whale. In Skegness. But once over the barrier, the bastard security start trying to evict me. Larry protests for me, and I scramble onto the stage before further mishap can occur. I bounce across the stage to an ecstatic Mac, who’s grinning away like you’ve never seen a man grin before. This song is infectious. For me it embodies what James are about live. It builds and grows, you never know where it’s going. On the edge of anarchy and collapse it just keeps going and gets better and better. And then Larry kicks in. Pure, pure, excellence. And I am up there. It feels damn good. I get a quick chat and kiss from Larry at the end of the song and we are escorted off to claim our backstage passes. There is a story behind all this, but you’ll just have to make your own guesses at that one…

Ring The Bells and Sometimes I hear, but don’t see. In my overexcitement I forgot I’d left my bag at the front of the stage. Money, cash, cards, phone and car keys. Everything. I’m abandoned to the moment but not that abandoned that I want to spend the rest of my life a pauper in Inverness. Numerous battles with security ensue. In the end I give in to my fate. There’s a lesson there.

My ears prick up when I hear She’s A Star, which I adore. The pared down reworking seems to suit the core of the song better, makes it more fragile and less bombastic, taking it back to the meaning of the lyrics as Tim wrote them. As it soars to its conclusion I hold my head in the air, close my eyes and just drink it all in. It is gorgeous. Even in a patch of mud outside the production portacabin.

We catch Getting Away With It, down at the side of the stage, my security battles forgotten for the moment. Another song which was good but not sensational, that’s been transformed this year.

Come Home from the side of the stage is phenomenal, the speaker is painfully close to me, I can feel the blasts of air as the sound pumps out of it. Tim lingers on the intonation of the vocals making it sound just as visceral as it first did to me 17 years ago in my teenage bedroom. Then the fireworks start. I am dancing like a loony and James are onstage playing Come Home to within an inch of its life. I am singing my heart out, the sky is on fire, this is joy, pure joy. Only James can exalt you to these levels of ecstasy. There is possibly nothing better. Well not in a muddy field with 10000 other people anyway.

Coda:

Once my bag dilemmas have been resolved, a task that required running and hiding from a vicious security Nazi I get to enjoy the aftershow. Believe me, if you’d told me a year ago I’d be stood in the rain chatting away with the band post gig, and not for the first time this year I’d probably have laughed in your face. And then laughed again. The warmth and generosity the band have shown myself and others, their willingness to put up with ‘the stalkers and obsessives’ is outstanding. Particular mention has to go to the very wonderful Larry who is a total gentleman and my hugest thanks go out to him. Mr Gott, if you happen to read this, one of those ‘Goldmotherly kisses’ in your direction right now. To answer a question he asked in a less rambling and drunken fashion, all this craziness this year hasn’t been about reliving some halcyon youth. It’s been about rediscovering fun and myself again after a long hiatus. Lots of things have suddenly started to make sense again, maybe that would’ve happened without James, I don’t know, but James kickstarted that, which makes them special and this whole year special. Watching James this year has filled me with joy and connection more than they’ve ever done. When I hear James play I feel like I’m stood on a mountaintop with the howling wind blowing through me, my spine tingles and I feel unbelievably alive. This is not a rehash of greatest hits and golden times, this is the way forward and a new beginning. For all of us. I’m looking forward to it.

I’m Alive…. Repeat to fade

Hoxton 2 June 25th 2007

I am about to go out to take my son to school, and my daughter to Mums and Tots. The phone bleeps with a message. It reads two simple but joyful words. Gig Alert. Unceremoniously, my husband is turfed off the computer while I log into the James cyber hotline. There is a gig in London in 5 days time. I gabble away excitedly to my bemused husband. I probably jump up and down a lot. We are going, there are no ifs or buts or maybes anymore. It's James. We are going.
An hour later I walk into Mums and Tots, a friend clocks me, sees my grin and rolls her eyes. You're off to see James again aren't you she asks. Predictable? Me? Perhaps when James are involved.
Of course these things never run smoothly. In the meantime our house nearly gets flooded twice. On Monday morning the waters are rising again, frighteningly close to the house which is sandbagged in preparation for worse to come. Again we have no power. The kids are dispatched to higher ground at my Mums. I try not to think of the worst possible outcome - not getting down to London that afternoon and missing James. In the end the prospect of waking up in a cold flooded house with the empty feeling that we've missed a fantastic gig is dismissed in favour of seeing James and waking up in a nice warm, dry hotel room. We paddle across the driveway to the car in our wellies and set off.
By the time we reach London the sun is out and we watch the reports of flooded northern England on the news with a sense of disbelief. As ever I'm itching to get to the venue and I'm too excited to eat a thing. Once there we start bumping into the travelling James army, the familar faces are there, and we find Su and Zip in the queue. Once the doors are open we rush in and claim a spot so at the front we rest our drinks on the monitors. It is a shoebox of a venue, with a tiny stage. Tonight will be upclose and very personal.
Excitedly we spy a setlist taped to the floor and get to see that not only is Born Of Frustration being played tonight, but two new songs, Not So Strong and Traffic. The excitement reaches feverpitch when we spy a trumpet next to the drumkit. Could it be? Can it really be? Are we really going to get to hear Andy Diagram tonight? I'm starting to feel like Charlie in the chocolate factory. Excited and slightly overawed by possibilities.
After what feels like an eternity the band finally come on stage, beginning with Say Something, before Andy joins them onstage for Seven. It is magical hearing James with a trumpet playing again. We are blown away.
Play Dead sounds fantastic, and Larry's guitar is stunning. There are so many layers of gorgeous sound that culminate in the divine harmonies at the end. Tonight, I can tell is going to be an epic one. Some wags at the front who can also see the setlist start calling out for new songs "play Traffic!" and they do. It's raw and undeveloped but it sounds great. My world is coming down like the Berlin Wall around me, I'm abandoned to this incredible music thats moving my body from head to toe. Another 2007 song follows, Chameleon, which simply rocks.
Although I can see the setlist, I still feel disbelief when I hear Larry begin to play the intro to Born Of Frustration, augmented again at long last by Andy's trumpet. The crowd break into spontaneous whooping, before Tim lets rip and pure James heaven begins. I spy Mr G stood on a chair at the side of the room grinning away and dancing like mad. I dance myself into a frenzy too. That trumpet sounds divine. Chainmail follows, which has sounded epic this year. Those who know me know how much dancing means to me, and this song is a celebration of the body. Your hips move.... it gets inside your head.... Words fail me from this point, Chainmail is a song to loose yourself too. And that's precisely what I do....
I continue to be lost to Out To Get You another exercise in song perfection. It's fragile but powerful, tender but not cloying. I'll never tire of this song. Next, another new one, Not So Strong has me mesmerised. It is wonderful. Like Traffic, it's still raw and undeveloped, but has a core of stunning beauty. And from I hear the lyrics are a work of exquisite beauty. This band hit my soul like no other. They just make sense like no ones ever made sense before. "when you're willing to live and you've nothing to lose, that's when you've found your own faith" Perfect.
Upside Downside still sounds as astonishingly good as it did on the April tour, and Sometimes as ever is a frenzy of songwriting genius. I am in agreement with Brian Eno on that one. A brace of fantastically good classics follow, Getting Away With It and Ring The Bells, and with no (frankly pointless) encore break the beautiful pared down intro to She's A Star kicks in. Mr G moves down from his go-go dancing perch to brave the front and comes and stands behind me. I lean back against him and we move together in James heaven to the first verse of Star. I close my eyes drinking in the gorgeousness of it and when I open them I realise with some surprise that Tim has moved the mike in front of us and is singing the song at me. It was, a very lovely moment, and testament to the very special connection that James make with their audience.
My joy is continued by what follows, Gold Mother, to which I predictably dance like a loon to. Yet again, Larry and Andy make this song something else. Something very stunning indeed.
Laid is the icing on the cake. A fantastic, joyful end to a fantastically joyous night..... or so I thought....
Half an hour later I'm by the bar having a drink with the band. I am very, very glad I'm not keeping floodwatch at home.

The Manchester Weekend

Wake up on Saturday 28th April with a buzzing nervous excitement. I can't quite believe that I've waited months for this day and it's finally here. I try to chill out, we listen to James in the garden while sunbathing. I am ridiculously excited. In the end we give up and head off into Manchester early. Sitting in the sun outside Urbis it feels like mid summer not April, it's one of those divinely charmed days that you wish could go on forever. Forgoing the Wetherspoons meet up (Kate threatens me with possible death should she be seen in there) we meet up with some of the oneofthethree crowd at the MEN arena. Once inside I'm a bit daunted by the size of the venue. I hate big venues, I prefer more intimacy. We are at least only a few feet away from Jim, so that makes up for it. After the Twang (alright if you like that kinda thing) we wait for James. As you may be able to see from the lovely photo I was just a tad excited. The gig was of course amazing from the moment Come Home began. The marching band were of course ridiculously cheesey, but in a whimsical, bizarre typically random Jamesian way. This band are about throwing out the rulebook, and they do it in style. Tim departs into the crowd during Say Something and gets completely mobbed. People desperately try to reach him to rub his head as if he's some strange talismanic presence. Deities are shown less respect than the mighty Tim. The gig goes by in an ecstatic blur, it was an epic night. Post gig myself Su and Kate carry on partying, witness a tramp pissing himself in Kro Piccadilly, and end up in the hotel bar at the Jarvis hotel. I have seen more salubrious Salvation Army Hostels. Trying to find the loo brought back scary images from The Shining. Fortunately I was too pissed to care too much. Somehow we got home around 4am. I woke up in my bed alone, so I know I got home, I'm just not sure how.

When I do wake up, through the blur of a hangover and a mouth that feels like a cats arse I find that my feet are still dancing. Perhaps thats how I got home, I danced my way, so if you read reports of a deranged woman wandering around Heaton Chapel dancing and singing in the streets then that was me.

Monday, woke up at silly o clock to go to queue up outside HMV. Gave up waiting for the train, so got a taxi instead. Got covered in soot and ash from the towering inferno, but got the wristband. Wahey! TMA (Mike) then took us to the greasiest greasy spoon in Manchester. Fortunately we lived to tell the tale.

Went back to the flat and tried to sleep. Impossible as my feet continued to dance and Tim continued to sing in my head. It's hard to sleep when you're thinking about Tim.

At 3 o clock gave up waiting and went back into town to go back to HMV. Watch a cute little set (Including the so far neglected Fred Astaire!) and managed to get 'Chelle a prime spot at the front. Go Girl!
Queue up again for the signing, getting more and more nervous, but Lisa and I manage to hand over the t shirts to the band without making too much of a fool of ourselves. They are genuinely rather touched by it and Tim held my hand to say thankyou until I was dragged away by a bouncer, (Move along NOW please!)
Shaking like a leaf, jump into a taxi and head off to Oxford Road. Still shaking violently leap up and down whooping whilst telling my mate Kate about the signing.

Try to eat some food. Fail. Far too excited.

As a coda to the days theme we queue some more at the Academy. Then some more.

James come onstage and play the most magical performance EVER! It's a tiny litle venue, fantastically intimate and our queuing pays off by getting right to the front. The highlight of the evening is for me, Upside, a new song that's treated more like an old classic. Tim may need his lyric sheet, but the crowd sing the words back to him triumphantly. Tim grins away in possible disbelief at the scene of devotion in front of him. Watching this band play live is an act of pure joy, the ecstasy bounces back off the walls and infects everyone. Kate is converted to the indisputable fact that Tim is the most divinely beautiful man alive. Having seen him dance up close she is well and truly besotted now.
After the gig we stand around in disbelief for a while, stunned and awed by what we have witnessed. We head off back across the road for a drink, but myself and Su get itchy feet, maybe, just maybe.....

We find an open door at the back of the venue, and simply walk in. There in the bar in front of us are Jim and Larry, who we get to chat with. We buy Larry a beer and make him blush when we tell him what a legend he is!

4 hours sleep later and I'm on a train in Stockport. I meet Mr G in Nottingham, he hands me my daughter, we tearfully say goodbye (I have Upside Downside on repeat in my head) and he gets on the next train to London, so he can fly out of Heathrow to India in the afternoon.

I now have to face no more gigs and a month of single parenthood. I can see a big comedown approaching, but right now I am so truly full of joy from the last few days that for the moment I don't care.

Looking forward to getting some sleep though.....